Lexmark Z 42 Color Jetprinter > Reviews > Quality printing

Author's product rating:   

Picture quality	Good
Printing speed	Average
Colour sensitivity	Good
Ease of use	Very easy
Value For Money	Good

Advantages:	Cheap to buy, simple to run and good quality printing
Disadvantages:	Expensive cartridges and full colour printing slow

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I've been a fan of Lexmark since I originally bought their 1020 Inkjet printer as a cheap way to buy a printer that is a fraction of costs of it's competitors. When I finally decided my 1020 was past its sell-buy date I had a look at some of the opposition Hewlet Packard, Cannon, Epsom and of course Lexmark. At the time Cannon and Epsom had some interesting deals and so I test drove two printers at a similar price and returned them. Hmm. I saw the Z42 advertised on QVC as a special and thought why not try it.

So I received a sturdy package protecting the printer that contained:
Installation Software CD (Drivers and Software)
12A1970 High Resolution, Black Print Cartridge
15M0120 High Resolution, Colour Print Cartridge
User's guide
USB Cable and Parallel cable for connection to the PC
Cost about £90 inc P&P

Specifications quoted
2400 x 1200 dpi (black and colour) on all paper types. That's nearly 40% higher than 2880 x 720 dpi models, which were around at the time!
Up to 10 pages per minute black and 5 pages per minute colour
PC/Mac Compatible
One-click printer driver software installation, simple cartridge loading and convenient ink level indicators
Accu-FeedTM paper handling virtually eliminates jams while handling a wide range of paper from envelopes to transparencies

Jargon out of the way so how did I find the use?
Simply put it's a case of "Boys and their toys" - 5 mins after receiving the printer it was unpacked and plugged in and connected to the PC using the USB cable provided. I turned on the Power switch and put the cartridges into their relevant slots and was asked for the CD to be inserted with the drivers. Exactly what it said on the can one click and I was there! Next Z42 prompted for the alignment process. To do this you look at the printed page and see which lines are the straightest. Ready for printing! Hurrah.
A voice spoke to me from the PC "printing started" and then followed by "printing complete"
5 minutes later a voice said "please load paper ..." (quite a few different voice messages are used utilising the audio facilities from your PC and informing you what is going on in American English) - In my haste only one sheet of paper inserted. So here goes lets insert 20 sheets and see what it does. No jams the Accu-FeedTM seems to work.
Next tried some acetates for the overhead projector and again it works! Getting concerned that I couldn't break it I thought time for some picture printing. Oh dear it slowed right down. Black and white statistics of 10 pages per minute OK quite close but Colour really depended on a combination of coverage and quality of print. Highest resolution and full page of picture I got no-where near the advertised 5 pages per minute colour nearer 5-10 minutes per page. Quality was great on photo paper but you could still tell that it was an inkjet. So I'm happy with almost all the bits and I went out and purchased the Photo cartridge. Hey presto the quality was now really Photographic but still no huge increase in speed. So I made a note don't print A4 sized colour pictures and use the normal postcard size. Speed acceptable with about 1 page a minute.
As an after thought the voice of Lexmark also tells you when the print cartridges are low and you can get a visual by looking in the program where the ink levels in the cartridges are displayed.

It's about this time a bloke will think about reading the manual. Surprisingly it's well written and simple to follow with clear instructions and a straight forward troubleshooting section.

The calendar software that came with the printer did not get much use but looked pretty simple and allowed you use your own images as backdrops.

After a year or so I got an unexpected problem where the printing quality suddenly went down hill so I got in contact with support at Lexmark who gave me some useful advise by email. I followed their advise (buy a new cartridge) and it still didn't work that well so they sent me a new cartridge for nothing which worked perfectly whilst I returned the one I'd purchased. Well done to Lexmark as they solved the problem in a very amicable way.

To sum up I’ve still got the printer and although the cartridges are expensive (Black £23-27, Colour £25-£29 and Photo £31-33) the quality of printing is high enough for most uses and I give the overall package a thumbs up.